Are versatile weapons useful?

[Craqshot]

The long sword, battle ax, and war hammer are staples of fantasy fighting, but they don't seem very effective in BG3; at least to me. Many of the major fighting styles and melee feats specifically exclude them, which seems to make using either a straight one-handed (usually finesse) or two-handed weapon a more effective build option. For example, Great Weapon Fighting won't work on versatile weapons. Neither does dueling, and two-weapon fighting with a long-sword wouldn't be possible until you unlock it with either the duel wielder feat or a special versatile that's also got finesse.

How do you use versatile weapons? Any great uses or awesome builds out that there for versatile weapons?

[Ironwu]

My suggestion is to look beyond the weapon basics and look for the bonus things the weapon gives. Plain weapons with simple +1 or +2 are common. It is the additional traits that are important.

Versatile weapons have certain advantages over non-versatile types. Depends on the class, the build, and how you want to use the weapons.

[pirate135246]

rapier in act 3 that gives you another reaction and a special built in reaction to add necrotic dmg

[Ironwu]

Versatile weapon use case:

So, you are using your versatile sword two-handed for the extra DPS it provides that way. But, whoa, you just took a look at the next enemy and now you need more survival. You pop a shield into your off-hand and you still have some of the sword DPS, all of its extra Traits and now have increased Armor Class (harder to hit) and any Traits the shield has on it.

You're ready to go to town on that target with less chance of being smacked around!

That is one of the advantages of Versatile weapons. :)

[Soteria]

Originally posted by Craqshot:

The long sword, battle ax, and war hammer are staples of fantasy fighting, but they don't seem very effective in BG3; at least to me. Many of the major fighting styles and melee feats specifically exclude them, which seems to make using either a straight one-handed (usually finesse) or two-handed weapon a more effective build option. For example, Great Weapon Fighting won't work on versatile weapons. Neither does dueling, and two-weapon fighting with a long-sword wouldn't be possible until you unlock it with either the duel wielder feat or a special versatile that's also got finesse.

How do you use versatile weapons? Any great uses or awesome builds out that there for versatile weapons?

Which feat excludes versatile weapons? I guess BG3 could implement this weird, but if you have a longsword, for example, equipped with no off-hand, you're using it as a 2h weapon and all 2h feats would apply. Likewise a monk can use a staff or spear and use the 2h dice but still attack with their fists.

The wiki says Great Weapon Fighting in particular does work with Versatile weapons, as it should. https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Great+Weapon+Fighting
Great Weapon Master again, per the wiki, works with Versatile: https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Great+Weapon+Master

[Hobocop]

Dueling works with all versatile weapons when used one-handed. Typically with a shield in the off-hand.

[Razorblade]

Great Weapons Master works on Versatile weapons. I threw ot on Astarion last game so he could do more damage with Phalar Aluve (one of the two dex longswords).

Not the world's best build; he had to chug Strength Elixirs to keep his accuracy up because of being limited to +1 weapons, and poor accuracy doesn't mesh well with Rogues being limited to one attack per turn, but it was decent.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

No, not really.

There's almost no cases where'd you'd give up a shield (+2 AC) to do on average 1 more pt. of damage.

[Craqshot]

Originally posted by Soteria:

Which feat excludes versatile weapons? I guess BG3 could implement this weird, but if you have a longsword, for example, equipped with no off-hand, you're using it as a 2h weapon and all 2h feats would apply. Likewise a monk can use a staff or spear and use the 2h dice but still attack with their fists.

The wiki says Great Weapon Fighting in particular does work with Versatile weapons, as it should. https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Great+Weapon+Fighting
Great Weapon Master again, per the wiki, works with Versatile: https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Great+Weapon+Master

That's good to know because that's not how it's written in the game. ie; it says "when using a two-handed weapon". Since two-handed is a weapon attribute that versatile weapons don't have, I assumed it wouldn't work for them.

[Dragon Master]

Originally posted by Pan Darius Loveless:

No, not really.

There's almost no cases where'd you'd give up a shield (+2 AC) to do on average 1 more pt. of damage.

But if you are using feats meant for two-handed weapons then having a versatile weapon can matter a lot if you want to switch between pure damage vs survivability.

[Gewinnste]

Originally posted by Craqshot:

... Great Weapon Fighting won't work on versatile weapons. Neither does dueling, ...

WTF are you talking about? GWM, GWF and Duelling all work with Versatile weapons in BG3! Duelling obviously only if equipped with a shield and GWM and GWF only if no shield is equipped.

It never seizes to amaze me how low the quality of the Steam forum for this game is, at times. And it's a real problem, e.g. the quoted sentences are shown in the FIRST HIT to the Google search: bg3 does great weapon fighting work for versatile weapons
! ! !

[The_Dipl0mat]

Yes because you can have kethrics sledgehammer and a shield and it looks fun